Sérgio Merêces gives us a rundown of the workflow behind his arch-viz image Silent House

I'd like to share the process of creating of my last personal work: Silent House. My idea for this image was to produce a house in a quiet, silent and almost forgotten place that illustrates all the peaceful attributes of nature.

Before I start working on a project I need to feel inspired to create it. For me this is one of the most important steps! I lose time here, thinking and looking into references (these can be almost everything - like a photo, painting, movie, or simple everyday things) that inspire me to form my main idea for the project. After I get my idea I began to do quick drafts in 3D and begin to test the composition and cameras.

Project configurations

I will first show you how I set up my Gamma in my projects. In 3ds Max, I always set Space Gamma to 2.2, this will allow you to work in a linear workflow.

My gamma settings are shown here

Modeling

For the house modeling, I began with a simple box which I extruded and divided all the parts with edge loops. Then I modeled the window frames with the same technique, and for the wood floor I use the Floor Generator script. This is an awesome script to produce floor tiles, and you can find it here: www.cg-source.com/floorgenerator.php

My final model of the house

Textures and materials

I like to spend more time in this step, and test all the materials and textures to get the desired look. I used the following textures as shown in these images...

(ID: 273961, pid: 0) Thanh on Sat, 10 May 2014 1:09am Thank you for this Tutorial.
I'm very curious about your settings in the Vray EnvironmentFog. Could you please show it to us and explain how to use it correctly? I started trying to get those volumetric lights with Vray EnvironmentFog but it ends up with an noisy washed out rendering. And what light did you use? Thanks very much

(ID: 235220, pid: 0) Marcus on Thu, 21 November 2013 2:16pm Thanks for explaining your workflow and the 'top tip' at the and;)

(ID: 235213, pid: 0) Carlos Azevedo on Thu, 21 November 2013 1:43pm pt: Bom trabalho. Os raios de sol entre as arvores já ficaram na imagem original do vray, pelo que entendi, mas eu tenho tentado fazer o mesmo e não consigo esse efeito. Uso o vray par c4d. tens alguma sugestão que me possa ajudar? Obrigado.
en: Good job. Sunbeams between the trees were already in the original image vray, I understand, but I have tried to do the same and I can not have this effect. Use the vray c4d pair. you have any suggestions that can help me? Thank you.